I believe it's essential we steer steemit away from behaving like Google. I think the downvoting is a version of censorship and whales have too much power, not dissimilar to what's happening with google. Inflammatory knee jerk response material like citing paedophile images are used as the excuse for censorship just in the same way the main stream screams paedophiles or terrorists as an excuse for censorship/surveillance.
The end result of the downvoting/flagging that I've witnessed is people downvoting or flagging content that simply disagrees with their views. This isn't child porn or terrorism! The downvoting flagging system mirrors the tryanny of the mass opinion we see in Wikipedia and censored society - often an opinion drip-fed by MSM with no real foundation as they have censored history and science to suit their mandate. Steemit needs to be different.
I agree with Luke. Corporations control government and we should be very wary. I agree with Jeff. Get rid of centralised government and the Corporations have no puppets to bribe, push their agenda and protect their operations.